Mapping a network drive for Picasa Linux via Gui

Are you getting tired of editing fstab every time you want to mount a network share ? Are you getting tired of adding a network place only to realize that your application does not use network places (ahem digiKam) or running a program under Wine (e.g. Picasa) and there is no network neighborhood ?

The best way to do this without editing configuration files or firing commands into the terminal is to use a utility called Smb4k. Read more at: http://smb4k.berlios.de/

This tutorial shows how to map a network drive using KDE4 and Smb4k. Gnome would be similar.

Install:
Make sure that the software sources are setup correctly. Smb4k is in 'universe'.



Install smb4k via package management.



Run smb4k. You should be able to find under the menus. In KDE it is under utilities.

You can configure Smb4k to auto unmount and remount when you start and stop smb4k.



Smb4k will run in system tray. It is the blue earth ball.



On the main interface panel for Smb4k click on the network search tab. Type in the name of your Nas server. I have two: nas1(a Synology DS-106e) and nas2(a Synology CS407e). You can use an IP address too. Mounting the share is as simple as double clicking the share you want from the list.



Smb4k showing all the mounted shares.



Smb4k mounts the share under your home folder and under a folder with the name of smb4k. In my example I mounted the photos share from nas1.



The beauty of mounting the shared folder under your home folder is that you do not need to change a single setting in Picasa. Picasa will pick up the mounted network share automatically.



Note: I had problems initially to see the shares on one of my NAS servers, but after setting one of the NAS servers to local master browser, the problems went away.